Reports
October 2018

This evaluation report looked into a pilot six-month Home Office funded county lines intervention project St Giles Trust delivered in Kent helping vulnerable young people out of county line activity. It also carried out a scoping report to look at national approaches to the issue of county lines | St Giles Trust, UK

Every six seconds someone dies from a smoking-related disease and the problem is likely to worsen; the steep smoking declines in richer countries are slowing while in poorer countries smoking is set to rise. Existing forms of tobacco control are proving insufficient. There is substantial international, independent evidence that safer nicotine products could lead to a global revolution in public health. Time is way overdue that countries and international organizations support tobacco harm reduction and safer nicotine products | Knowledge Action Change, UK

Cigarette production and consumption have seen dramatic growth in recent decades and although the health effects of smoking are widely recognized, its impacts on the environment are largely overlooked. From tobacco cultivation and curing, to cigarette manufacturing, distribution, consumption and discarding, every stage in the global tobacco supply chain involves considerable resource inputs, and results in the production of wastes and emissions | WHO, UK

The main risk factor for transmission of bloodborne viruses (BBVs) in drug users in Ireland is injecting opioids, particularly heroin. Estimates from a 2014 capture-recapture study indicate that there are just under 19,000 problem opioid users in Ireland, with over 70% living in Dublin | HPSC, Ireland

This report calls for the decriminalisation of drug possession in Ireland and argues treating possession as a criminal offence both fails to discourage drug use and acts as a barrier to those seeking help and reintegration | Anna Liffey Project and LSE, Ireland and UK

In Sep 2017 the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence, in conjunction with researchers at the University of Roehampton, undertook one of the largest direct-to-consumer international surveys of its kind into withdrawal from psychiatric drugs. This report will summarise both the quantitative and qualitative data on the U.K. antidepressant users (319) who reported their withdrawal experience | APPG, UK

This report identifies failure points in the health care system based on the testimony of 158 individuals impacted by prescribed drug withdrawal who responded to two petitions lodged with parliamentary Petitions Committees in Scotland (1) and Wales (2) in 2017 | APPG, UK

Both regulations and depictions of drug use in gaming contribute to the suppression regime around drugs. Drug users and dealers are portrayed as violent, destabilising forces that are rightly met with violence. Regulators and creators contribute to the stigmatisation of drug users by encouraging drug use to be in the most of violent games. Taken together, this helps to legitimise the use of punitive and securitised measures against dealers especially | GDPO, UK

This report calls for the decriminalisation of drug possession in Ireland and argues treating possession as a criminal offence both fails to discourage drug use and acts as a barrier to those seeking help and reintegration | Anna Liffey Project and LSE, Ireland and UK

[From August] This report is based on independent research commissioned from the Children’s Policy Research Unit and funded by the National Institute for Health Research Policy Research Programme. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the National Institute for Health Research, the Department of Health and Social Care or its arm's length bodies, and other Government Departments | UCL, UK

Today, the Government is laying the Misuse of Drugs (Amendments) (Cannabis and Licence Fees) (England, Wales and Scotland) Regulations 2018 (“the 2018 Regulations”) in the House. These regulations reschedule cannabis-based products for medicinal use and will come into force on 1 November 2018 | Parliament.uk, UK

We seek feedback on the practical changes that will affect the tobacco and e-cigarette industries if the UK leaves the EU with no deal. We welcome feedback on any practical issues that you think should be considered as part of the implementation of changes | DHSC, UK

The report will help local commissioners and services to review whether an appropriate range of treatment and recovery support interventions are being delivered locally. It can also help identify gaps in provision. The site contains restricted statistics and you will need a password to access the report. If you are a commissioner or service provider and you do not already have a password to access the site please contact the NDTMS | NDTMS, UK

Prisoners are dying preventable deaths, particularly as a result of the alarming levels of drug abuse in jails, and some prisons and their health providers struggle to learn from investigations into deaths, according to Acting Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) Elizabeth Moody | Prison and Probation Ombudsman, UK

This report presents the findings of a review of the self-inflicted deaths in prison custody in 2016, with a particular focus on the way in which mental health concerns were identified, assessed and managed, to see whether a pattern of common factors exists. [Includes a look at the role of substance use] | MoJ, UK

This report – by StopWatch, Release, and LSE’s International Drug Policy Unit - documents the disproportionate impact that drug law enforcement continues to have on black and minority ethnic communities in England and Wales | StopWatch, Release, LSE, UK

This report provides examples of local, national and international research projects in addition to news about our education programmes [inlcuidng those relating to drug use such as, Drug Related Deaths Monitoring across Merseyside Building family health and Drink Less Enjoy More: a multi-component approach to addressing the sale of alcohol to drunks] | PHI, UK

We are pleased to present our new strategy for 2018-2022. The strategy outlines our four strategic aims, and the work that we will do together with partners across the country to achieve them | MEAM, UK

Drug use in pregnancy can lead to serious health risks for both the mother and the fetus, including HIV infection and fatal overdose. At the same time, drug use during pregnancy need not lead to any negative outcomes, or to outcomes significantly different from those experienced by non drug-using women | Open Society Foundations, USA

This report evaluates the impacts of drug policies implemented across the world over the past decade, using data from the United Nations (UN), complemented with peer-reviewed academic research and grey literature reports from civil society | IDPC, UK

This report provides an overview of results from the fourth wave of the Healthy Ireland Survey, an annual interviewer administered face-to-face survey commissioned by the Department of Health | Department of Health, Ireland

In the year ending March 2018, there were 282,248 stops and searches conducted by the police in England and Wales, a fall of 7% compared with the previous year (304,132 stops and searches), and the lowest number of stop and searches carried out since the current data collection began in the year ending March 2002. In the latest year, arrests resulting from stops and searches fell by 7% | Home Office, UK

On 26th October at RCPE, SHAAP will launch its new report, ‘Dying for a drink’, commissioned by the Scottish Government, that discusses alcohol deaths in Scotland and draws on interviews with those affected to highlight the personal tragedies that this continues to cause. The new report also makes recommendations for actions to reduce this in future. SHAAP’s new report also calls for more ‘professional optimism’, to recognise that people can recover from alcohol problems and to support that process | SHAAP, UK

Efforts to address cultures of drunkenness by increasing bar staff compliance with the law and public awareness of it, have been made in recent years by Liverpool City Council (and partners) with the implementation of the community-based multi-component intervention Drink Less Enjoy More (DLEM; branded Say No To Drunks [SNTD] during the initial pilot phase). This report presents data from the most recent wave of evaluation in 2017 and provides comparisons across evaluation time points | PHI, UK

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